Three years on, there’s still a thrum of pain around my heart, but nothing compared to the agony I felt during the months that followed my divorce. Had Claire not been holding my hand through the longest, darkest tunnel, I can’t say for sure I would have reached the light. And yet Claire, like my other friends, has always been there right under my nose, which makes me realise, for as long as I can remember, I’ve prioritised romantic relationships over friendships. Always.

Groomed by fairy tales, by Cinderella and her goddamn lost slipper, from a young age I genuinely believed Prince Charming, otherwise known as ‘The One’, was on his way to find me. Within a few years, Mr Charming and I would be married with kids. Together, we’d make a nice home and I’d attend coffee mornings with our toddlers wearing head-to-toe pale hues. OK, perhaps not the toddler outfits, but I believed we’d all live happily ever after. Turns out, we didn’t.

In the maelstrom of the past three years, it’s the women in my life who’ve picked me up off the floor when I had a nervous breakdown. It’s my girlfriends who, upon hearing my voice over the phone, have sped across town to sit in bed (or the pub) with me. In January this year, when I hit a finance-related rough patch, my friend Gabriele (also a single parent who works full-time) called every single morning to check I was up and out of bed. During other times of extreme financial pressure, a couple of girlfriends transferred grocery money into my bank account and even paid my rent or mortgage that month. It’s safe to say, without them, I’d be well and truly fucked (shorthand for possibly homeless, broke, broken and a whole load of other stuff I’m far too scared to even think about).

The morning I left our family home and moved into a rental seen only via an estate agency website, my phone rang. It was a funny, fabulous, fierce woman I knew through my friend Jill but had never met properly before, Nicole. Another single mother, she’d just been through her own family breakup.

“My friends saved me during my divorce. I’ll never prioritise love over them again”